Learning About Life With The `Group'

August 15, 1999|By KYRIE O'CONNOR

Group: Six People In Search of a Life

By Paul Solotaroff, Riverhead Books, $24.95, 322 pp.

More than being physically fit, more even than getting a really great makeover, Americans crave mental and emotional health. Get the mens sana, the thinking goes, and the in corpore sano will follow. (Or, at the very least, you'll be happier with the body and face you've got.)

In a nonfiction work that veers perilously close to being a guilty pleasure, writer Paul Solotaroff in ``Group: Six People in Search of a Life'' records the actual group-therapy sessions of a six-pack of New Yorkers on the mend and how they heal each other and themselves. In addition, he interviews each of the six off-site to give the characters a little more context.

Solotaroff is straightforward about his lack of objectivity. He is a former patient of the psychotherapist who runs the group, the pseudonymous Dr. Charles Lathon, and a happy product of a similar group experience. Nor is he objective about Lathon; he sweetly recalls the terror of his first non-patient lunch with Lathon (in his size 50 suit), the ex-patient cutting his hamburger carefully in two so as to seem ultra-polite.

There's a bit of Prospero to the big alpha dog Lathon as he composes the group. When Solotaroff asks how Lathon chose the members, the reply is simple. `` `Oh, please, I'm no fool,' he grunted. 'I've stacked the deck good. This is the smartest bunch of people I've ever assembled.'''

They're smart, all right, but most of their problems cut across the lines of class and smarts. Sara can't find or keep a nice guy. Dylan battles alcohol and can't stop loving his nasty wife. Lina's feeling small and crippled next to the blowhard husband who dominates her divorce proceedings. Peter can't find a job he deserves, and when he finds a girl he deserves, it scares him. Rex hides behind his master-of-the-universe pose. Jack, broke and rebounding from embezzling, worries about starting over at 60.

Lathon acts as a kind of guru/coach, forcing them to use his language (pain is good, suffering is bad; you have to learn your ``true story,'' not the ``false story'' the world makes you believe about yourself), sometimes teasing, sometimes almost bullying. He seems to have tight control over the sessions.

Lathon is also an excellent predictor of who will succeed and why. Peter and Lina are his pets, and they show almost instant -- almost unbelievable -- improvement. Rex and Dylan, by contrast, are the least-loved by the group as a whole, and their progress -- especially that of Dylan, who goes on a couple of benders -- appears, on the surface, spotty or nonexistent.

Solotaroff's quite the reporter, too. The stories ring true, especially that of Lathon, whose strongman facade cracks dramatically, to the shock of the group.

And, frankly, there's a residual effect: There are six members of the group ostensibly, but you must count yourself. You will judge, scorn, dismiss, sympathize, and unless you are perfect, you will not have to ask for whom the bell tolls. There's useful psychological information, even strength, to be derived.

There's one problem I have trouble with, and that's the disguising of the identities of the characters. ``In turn, I have kept my end of the bargain, changing members' names, physical descriptions and, in some cases, professions, since several are well known in their field,'' Solotaroff avers. Well, that's troubling. People are surely more that the sum of their reflections and resumes, but sheesh. I wish I knew what to filter out, because some of that information seems crucial, and slippery. If professions are changed, are the quotes accurate, the sequences, the outcomes? (One also hopes he'd take as much care with a group of individuals of less clout.)

If this one bit of strangeness doesn't deter you, you are in for compelling reading. Take it to the beach, and you may forget to get your toes wet.